si-blog

"When you get right down to it, there is no good solution regarding font sizing
on the Web today."

Eric Meyer

Eric Meyer appears to have
extended an olive branch in
Ian Hickson's direction after their
recent volleys. He says that every typographical solution
available to the web designer has its problems, and I am inclined to agree with him. He
looks forward to the day when a downloadable font mechanism is available and popular. I
think that it is important to understand that as long as there are different browser
makers, there will be different browsers - along with all the associated aggravation.
Only with extremely detailed and specific web standards could we hope to see browsers
behaving predictably and identically. Part of me doesn't like that outcome, however much
it would make my life easier.

I've altered the entry I made on the 25th to include a quote from
Ian Hickson. This has been
done purely as an experiment so that I can test out my new quotation-box-thingy. I
haven't decided whether or not I'll keep it. I guess if it appears again, you'll know.

I hadn't noticed, but before I posted yesterday on miniscule text,
Ian Hickson had a few things to
say about it as well. He basically
berates designers who create web pages that use non-relative units of measurement when specifying
font sizes. Eric Meyer then
fired a volley back at him, quite correctly
pointing out that in most cases a user can specify a font size preference in a user style sheet.

I think they are both correct. Designers should always use relative units wherever
possible. Since this is not always the case (or possible), Eric is right to remind us that users still
have options open to them. Many browsers now offer resizing options that solve the problem anyway,
although I think Opera goes too far with its zoom tool.

I have noticed that almost everywhere I go on the world wide web, I find that sites have been
created with absolutely miniscule default text sizes. Even respected giants of the web design world
like Jeffrey Zeldman and
Joshua Davis produce
work that, at least on a Windows platform, looks really small. One site in particular that drives
me crazy is Kaliber10000 (also known as
K10k). The design is absolutely incredible, but the small font size being used
means that glyphs are dwarfed by medium-sized subatomic particles. The pixel-perfect nature of many
sites means that the text cannot be resized without breaking layouts, as in the case of K10k.

After a heated debate on the css foundations
mailing list, I decided to make a slight alteration to my layout. The width of the right navigation
and the right margin of the content window are now specified in percentages instead of ems. The change
only really becomes obvious when you change the text size or alter the width of your browser window.
The right nav gradually shrinks in width as the window gets narrower, giving the content a little more
room to work with. This is something of a compromise in visual design, but I believe it makes the
content just that little bit more accessible, which is a good thing.

This is really scary! This is the first time since its launch back in September
2002 that I have redesigned the si-blog. Because I don't use any blogging software, such as
Movable Type or
Blogger, I must create every entry
manually using a text editor. Part of the reason I decided to do a redesign was to cut down
on the amount of work I must to do.

The new format is based around an unordered list, with each entry existing as a different
list item, giving me all sorts of formatting options. I will no longer be giving each entry
its own document. From now on, a month of entries will be archived together, though permanent
links will point to specific sections. These permanent links are now incorporated into the
entry title, which is an <h4> element. In addition, the entire month
has its own permanent link (as part of an <h3> element).

I apologize for not writing more over the last week, but a ton of homework, 2 feet of snow
and a frustrating disagreement with MSNTV (it now supports the
CSS@import rule) have made it
impossible for me to find the time. I hope to be back on track soon.

Jeffrey Zeldman churns out interesting
material at a prolific rate, most of which I munch eagerly in an effort to learn as much as I can
about web design. Today he has written a brief piece commenting on an
excellent article
by John P. Gallant about the float model of Internet Explorer. Zeldman says:

Float is essential to all CSS layouts
- it's how we tell elements to sit next to each other instead of lining up one after the other in
Chinese fire drill formation.

AllCSS layouts? This is a popular
misconception, I think. It scares many designers away from
CSS who find float rules difficult to understand.
I know that sounds like a lame excuse, but have you actually read the
float rules? They are not the easiest specifications to follow.
Let me give you this teaser:

A floated box must have an explicit width (assigned via the 'width' property,
or its intrinsic width in the case of replaced elements). Any floated box becomes a block box
that is shifted to the left or right until its outer edge touches the containing block edge or
the outer edge of another float. The top of the floated box is aligned with the top of the
current line box (or bottom of the preceding block box if no line box exists). If there isn't
enough horizontal room on the current line for the float, it is shifted downward, line by line,
until a line has room for it.

Say what?

Since a float is not in the flow, non-positioned block boxes created before
and after the float box flow vertically as if the float didn't exist. However, line boxes
created next to the float are shortened to make room for the floated box. Any content in the
current line before a floated box is reflowed in the first available line on the other side
of the float.

Huh? I can just see Mr. Wysiwig eating
all that up with gusto.

Anyway it's time I got to the point of this blog entry. I think Zeldman has dismissed those
designers who prefer the slightly more rigid approach of using absolute
positioning. Since I first became aware of Cascading Style Sheets I have been using
absolute positioning to control the layout of my sites. Contrary to the use of float, I rarely
have unexpected or difficult-to-fix issues with it. I prefer to limit the use of float
to displaying images or little div elements with quotations in and the like. But
it seems that absolute positioning is not trendy enough. I don't understand this at all, because
I would have thought that designers who are used to using tables for laying out everything would
at least find comfort in placing div elements wherever they like.